February 2012

02/29/2012

Skansen is a period village right in Stockholm. In the summer I bet it's pretty neat, if it's not too crowded. In the winter it's a lot of doors with padlocks and empty frozen animal enclosures. Though we got to see a Żubr finally, which was cool, and we saw feeding time for the Great Grey Owls ("Love to eat them mousies, mousies what I love to eat. Bite they little heads off, nibble on they tiny feet").

In the afternoon took a long walk through the city, unsuccessfully seeking the cafe that looks like a medieval dungeon, and spent some time in the national history museum, taking care of some of Frank's quests for history class. A nicely done museum, sadly though they couldn't quite get away from "we have glass cases of tiny objects which we dug out of the ground and have carefully cataloged and wish you to look at."

The use of herr ("Mr" or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs" or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered the only acceptable mode of initiating conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni (the standard second person plural pronoun)... With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these previously significant distinctions of class became less important and du became the standard. Though the reform was not an act of any centralized political decrees, but rather a sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years from the late 1960s to early 1970s.

Going through pictures on my camera, I'd taken pictures of these two quotes just so I'd have them later. You have to step out of America to be reminded we don't have a monopoly on righteousness.

A token of everlasting remembrance of the slaughter victims.A warning to rulers that no social conflict in our country can be resolved by forceA sign of hope for fellow-citizens that evil need not prevail.

Gdańsk, Memorial of the Fallen Shipyard Workers, 1970

Syria? Hello, Syria?

One should call a spade a spade.What is happening now in Vietnam is a form of torture...Therefore the air raids are a deed of infamy.There are many such in modern history.

They are often associated with place names.Guernica, Oradour, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice, Sharpeville, Treblinka.Violence has triumphed.But the judgement of posterity has fallen heavily on those responsible.Now there is one more name to be added to the list:Hanoi, Christmas 1972.

02/25/2012

Failure of management: In 1628 the Vasa, a brand new warship, the biggest in the world, set sail for the first time from Stockholm. A mile out, easily in views of the crowd watching it go, it tipped over and sank. The king, who was off fighting wars, had been heavily involved in the project in the form of sending letters demanding more and heavier guns on the top deck, and demanding that the ship be finished NOW. The original designer had died a year into the construction, and the assistant shipwrights had take over. A stability test, in the form of thirty sailors running in a bunch first to one side and then the other, had the be called off in the middle for fear it would capsize the ship. They added as much ballast as would fit, but nobody wanted to tell the off-site king that the boat wasn't going to work.

I once heard my late friend Doug say that there are no technical failures, only failures of management. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the planet it was supposed to orbit. One of the software modules was reporting data in pound-seconds instead of newton-seconds. Doug told me the team working on that software knew there was going to be a problem, but nobody wanted to tell the team lead because he was such an overbearing boor.

So there you go. But it's a really good museum.

I find it interesting that a couple of times now I've heard Swedish tour guides refer wistfully to the days when sweden had a huge European empire. Funny, in Poland and Lithuania the period is called the "Swedish Deluge" when the Commonwealth lost a third of its population. What a difference the change of a couple of miles makes.

Put frank to bed last night ( I thought) and went for a walk at around 11:00. Omg, on a saturday night the city of Stockholm is one gigantic party. It makes San Francisco look like a des Moines. The best part was this SMS I got from frank as I was heading back:

02/24/2012

The Swedes have a new princess yesterda, Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, grandchild to the king, second in line to the throne, kind of exciting. Some scandal about the name, it's non traditional. Started the day with a walking tour, then a pilgrimage to the offices of Mojang AB, creators of Minecraft. Didn't go past the front door, though, we would have had to buzz to get in.

Then we tried a harbor cruise. I learned that there is no private rental market in Sweden. If you want to rent an apartment (not buy) you queue for that city. The queue in Stockholm is thirty years long. They know it's a problem and are talking about possible fixes. I was talking to the tour guide about it and coukdn't resist teasing her about it, "You wacky socialists." she protested most strongly against that classification, they'd elected a conservative government in 2003 and had even lowered the income tax, they were the most conservative government in Europe! I didnt have the heart to tell her that the American right trots out "going to become just like Sweden" as their standard line whenever someone dares to suggest in their presence that the government should have any kind of a role in public life at all. Sigh.

Having blown two out of three Gdańsk days at Malbork, I was determined to squeeze in as many museums as we could. We got up and I dragged frank to the post office museum, managing to get there shortly after it opened. Gdansk was a free city between 1919 and 1939. Poland got the right to extend its postal network into the city and had a post office and some mailboxes. These were the first targets when the German army showed up in 1939. The brave polish postmen managed to hold out for a whole day before being overwhelmed. Little details like that, you realize of how many small parts the very large war was composed of. Interesting was the German attack plan, six typewritten pages complete with intelligence about how the building was laid out and where the custodian's office was and how to take him out. There was a group of high school kids in there, slightly reverential, I could see why.

Then The Crane, 14th century wooden crane that could lift 2,000 kilos and was also used for masting ships. Powered by four giant hamster wheels where some poor schmuck would provide the power. I didn't realize until later that there must be a reduction gear in there, but I didn't see it.

Followed by the gdansk maritime museum, the history of seafaring in gdansk and Poland. Missed a lot of the details, but whatever. Saw a bunch of models of the submarine Orzel and only just now read the story. We're going to go to the Amber museum but Tuesday's it closes early. Just as well since we only just got to the ferry by 4:30 as it was, ninety minutes before it sailed.

Enjoyed sleeping on the ferry even more than I'd enjoyed sleeping on the train. A pretty good roll set in over nightm and the seas were roughy enough that she was an hour off her schedule. The color of the Baltic in winter is an enormous gray. Got up at 4am to see if there were any northern lights, but the sky was completely overcast. After undressing about to climb back into my bunk I looked out the window and saw stars, so I got dressed again and went back on deck, but still nothing. Ah, the life of a sailor! an hour long train ride from Nynamshamn to Stockholm, ultra modern quiet election train, we're certainly not I Poland any more.

In Stockholm it turns out that the "Red Boat Hostel" is actually in a red boat! Who knew? Icebound in its moorings, we first saw it from about two hundred feet up on the hillside above it. Slid down on our buts on the frozen trail.

02/21/2012

Not to be undone by a minor setback like "all our stuff is closed on Monday", I dragged Frank out of bed early again today and back onto the train to Malbork castle. The scene today was about the same as it was yesterday, lots of spacious, empty, cold stone courtyards. The swirling flurries of snow were new though. Completely empty of people, just like yesterday. Also completely empty of helpful signs, just like yesterday. We finally settled on the method of trying every single door we could find. Did I mention this is it he largest brick castle in Europe? Sometimes the door would be locked, sometimes it would open on to the face of a startled office worker at their desk, sometimes it would open onto a museum exhibit, each one staffed with an innately suspicious local who watches you carefully the whole time you're there. At one point, after having looked through the amber trinkets in a little gift shop, we went out the ack through a little door tha t was clearly marked "wyscie/ausgang/exit" only the be yelled at by one of the exhibit watchers for having come into her exhibit from the wrong direction. We turned around to leave by the same door we'd entered by only to find the other side of which was also clearly labelled "wyscie/ausgang/exit".

We somehow managed to find the dormitories, a major set of rooms, the only entrance to which was a small four foot doorway halfway down a long unlit corridor.

Lunch was in a beautiful period room with a roaring fireplace and little window seats. I am sure I ordered the house special, pointing it out on the menu, which was to consist of soup, pork knuckles, and like two other things. My soup came, followed by a long, long lacuna. I thought I'd remembered something on the menu about a twenty minute wait, but I wasn't sure, so I bore it patiently. We read on our kindles. A half an hour later I finally asked the waitress, "Everything? Yes? Ah, ok, can we have the bill then?". And then I paid 62 zlotys for a bowl of soup, Frank's main dish, and a beer. I'm almost sure I got shafted out of something, but who knows?

Although we'd originally planned to be back by noon, the desultory method of exploring the castle meant we didn't get back to the train station until 1:30, which happened to be right in the middle of a three hour gap in the train schedule. So we didn't get back to Gdańsk until 4:00, by which time all the museums were closed.

We finished off the day with an orgy of multi cultural ism, eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then watching Jet Li's "Hero" on DVD at the hostel, in the original Chinese, subtitled in Polish. Another exercise in opacity, that movie makes absolutely no sense without the dialogue.

02/20/2012

That afternoon: Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, followed by the Road to Freedom exhibition. There's an armored car covering the door, go downstairs into a concrete bunker.

Polish Months: June 1956, massive protests against the Communist government out down by tanks. March 1968, widespread student strikes coinciding with the Prague Spring suppressed by security forces. December 1970, Price increases trigger strikes in the Baltic cities, brutally put down by the army killing 42 of their own citizens. September 1980, the birth of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in a Soviet-bloc country? December 1981, ostensibly to preempt the Soviet army coming in to straighten things out, General Jaruszelski imposes Martial Law, declaring a state of war exists in his own country, that lasts for eighteen months. In round table talks between the government and Solidarity, initiated to forestall economic chaos, lead to semi-free elections, and in September the first non-communist government in 40 years is voted into office by the Sejm. What a story. And there's other stuff in there too. What a museum.

Day 1: in the morning get up early to take the train to Malbork castle, the seat of power for the Teutonic Knights, who came back from the Crusades with enough money to run this part of the world from 1200 to 1350. Biggest brick castle on the world. The grounds are open but all the rooms are closed cause it's Monday, boo! Colder than hell in there too. For lunch in the town had spaghetti pizza, which was unexpectedly quite good [and memorable, two weeks later we're still talking about it].

In the afternoon found the bus out to Westerplatte, scene of the first shots fired in WWII. A little island just past the entry to the port of the free city of Gdańsk, where 200 doughty Poles held off a superior German force for seven days, a force that included a battleship that stood twenty yards offshore firing it's guns into the bunkers. Really nice to be able to walk the whole island and read about it, excellent exhibition, inspiring. Best part of the day.

02/14/2012

Saw an awesome Polish film the other day. Did you know Poland has a thriving film industry? Róża. The Polish word for "rose" (also the name of the main character. The diacritics mean that it's pronounced "roo-zha", the "ż" is kind of like the "j" in "django".

Awesome film. Makes In Darkness look like a Warner Brothers cartoon. But I notice that IMDB has the title mispelled, they have it as "Róza". WTF? But I can fix that. Or can I? Here's what they say:

Ró&#380;a

This correction has been rejected. You need to correct this correction before it will be accepted.

02/11/2012

Wisława Szymborska passed away last week, one of the great modern poets of Poland. The news said upwards of 10,000 people braved the cold and the snow to see her service in the Cmentarz Rakowicki. One of her poems I found at random:

Cat in an empty apartment

Dying - you wouldn't do that to a cat. For what is a cat to do in an empty apartment? Climb up the walls? Brush up against the furniture? Nothing here seems changed, and yet something has changed. Nothing has been moved, and yet there's more room. And in the evenings the lamp is not on.

One hears footsteps on the stairs, but they're not the same. Neither is the hand that puts a fish on the plate.

Something here isn't starting at its usual time. Something here isn't happening as it should. Somebody has been here and has been, and then has suddenly disappeared and now is stubbornly absent.

All the closets have been scanned and all the shelves run through. Slipping under the carpet and checking came to nothing. The rule has even been broken and all the papers scattered. What else is there to do? Sleep and wait.

Just let him come back, let him show up. Then he'll find out that you don't do that to a cat. Going toward him faking reluctance, slowly, on very offended paws. And no jumping, purring at first.